


The hope and the hurt (But there’s gold in the dirt)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Frank and BJ show up in person briefly near the end, M/M, drunk kissing doesn't seem to be a tag but it's in here, mash fic is exceptionally hard to tag because it is Messy, platonic but physical? romantic but tragic? a complete mistake guided by projections? you decide, post-season 3, the precise nature of the hawkeye/margaret very much depends on your own interpretation, there's also mentioned Margaret/Frank and (presumably theoretical) Margaret/Trapper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Right.” Hawkeye nods. A lot of the time when Margaret says something, he ends up nodding along with overly exaggerated importance because she’s being so Regular Army about it, but now he’s not so sure. She seems to make a lot of sense tonight.That streak continues in a big way when she says, “It’s a shame about Trapper. He was very handsome, you know. Nice to look at.”Or: Hawkeye and Margaret get drunk, talk about wives and how terrible but not terrible but terrible they are, and make out with Trapper, but with each other and without Trapper.
Relationships: "Trapper" John McIntyre/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	The hope and the hurt (But there’s gold in the dirt)

**Author's Note:**

> I would apologize for the block of tags, but regrettably this is already the curated and heavily shortened version, fdjk. The title was taken from two lines of the song _Giants_ by Dermot Kennedy.

It’s late and Hawkeye is losing count. It’s the way it should be, the way he probably wants it to be as long as he doesn’t think about it too long. He’s so deeply engrossed in his own pathetic wallowing that he’s surprised when a figure materializes out of the hazy familiar surroundings of a deserted officer’s club. 

Then he’s surprised again when the figure slips onto the stool next to his at the bar and he sees who it is. “Oh, hello,” he tells Margaret. 

It doesn’t come with a complimentary joke only because he’s still processing how she got here, half-up ponytail and all, when she asks, in her usual commanding tones, “What are you doing here all alone?”

He thinks that over for a second. “Well,” he says, and to his further surprise finds that his mouth isn’t as cooperative as he usually knows it to be. He stretches his jaw and sticks his tongue out for a second to regain some control. Margaret watches him with only mild condescension and doesn’t say a thing, so he decides to give her an actual answer. “Everyone’s married.”

Margaret smacks the bar with her palm in passionate agreement. It’s an outburst that doesn’t go with what Hawkeye thought the tone of the conversation was so far, and also the first sign he gets that maybe he’s not the only one tonight who’s not quite sober, in spite of how straight Margaret’s spine seemed up until a moment ago. She’s good at keeping up appearances. “Tell me about it,” she says.

He’d rather not, so he asks, instead. “Frank?”

Margaret makes a derisive sound and rears her head back so far it gives her a double chin for a second, and that’s all Hawkeye needs to know. While Margaret launches into a muttered rant about married women and their pet ferrets and her own clear plastic heels imported all the way from Italy for some reason, Hawkeye flags down Mr. Kwang and orders another for himself and one of whatever Margaret will have.

“I bet Klinger could have gotten you a much better deal on those heels,” he says, when Mr. Kwang puts their glasses down in front of them. 

Margaret empties hers in one long pull and slams it back down on the bar. “Probably,” she says, expertly combining anger and gloom. “But I never pick the right men.” She glances at him, first sideways, and then with more sharpness. “Why _are_ you here alone? Where’s your new best bunkie?”

Hawkeye sips his drink. He’s not quite as brave as a Houlihan, or even halfway as motivated by fury tonight. Maybe some other day, but right now, he’ll have to get by on being downtrodden and lonely. “Writing his wife again.”

“Oho,” Margaret says. Hawkeye could swear he hears her growl. “I hate wives.”

“It’s not their fault,” Hawkeye quips. “Being a wife is what naturally happens to a woman when she marries.”

Margaret sneers and waves at Kwang for a refill. “That should’ve been me by now.”

Hawkeye wisely keeps his mouth shut for once. “Peggy sounds sweet,” he says instead. “So did Louise.” Alright, not so wise after all. Before Margaret can upend her drink in his lap, he comes to his senses and specifies, “Louise McIntyre.”

“Sure,” Margaret says, loftily, gesturing with her new drink. “But how nice can she really be if she took Trapper from us?” She peers at Hawkeye and puts her glass down, not spilling a drop even though it’s still full to the brim. She leans dangerously far his way and pokes his chest with a beautiful, perfectly manicured fingernail. He wants to lick it. “By the way, if you repeat any of this after we’re not drunk anymore, ever, I’ll kill you. We should respect these poor women that were conned into marrying our stinky men. It’s not their fault.”

Hawkeye leers at her, a deeply ingrained reflex. “Oh Margaret, do I detect a sudden feminist streak?” he asks, because there’s something funny about this. “What happened to those good old red, white and blue traditional family values?” Margaret’s fingernail moves up over his T-shirt towards his throat, and he looks down at it and feels a thrill at the idea of just waiting to see where it’ll end up, but regrettably he also still has this pesky desire to go on living for another day. 

He leans back on his stool, but it doesn’t work except to serve as a reminder that gravity won’t be kind if he’s stupid and tips backward. 

“Okay, alright, I swear.” He relents, raising his hands for good measure. “I’ll take this night to my grave.”

Margaret backs off, rights herself with considerable swaying effort that makes Hawkeye feel slightly better about his own tenuous relationship with being vertical, and wraps those fingers around her glass again. “Good. Because it’s not their fault.” She takes a swig. “But they’re also not here, so it doesn’t matter if for now I hate them and want them to drop dead and it’s all their fault.”

“Right.” Hawkeye nods. A lot of the time when Margaret says something, he ends up nodding along with overly exaggerated importance because she’s being so Regular Army about it, but now he’s not so sure. She seems to make a lot of sense tonight.

That streak continues in a big way when she says, “It’s a shame about Trapper. He was very handsome, you know. Nice to look at.”

“Very built,” Hawkeye agrees, thinking about those hot summer days where shirts become optional.

“Curls. Curls do something to me.”

“Really, really built,” Hawkeye reiterates, having moved on to thinking about the men’s showers. “Not lacking in size anywhere from head to toe.”

Margaret doesn’t give the appearance that she’s really listening to him. She sighs, almost dreamily. “God, I wish he were here again so I could kiss him goodbye one last time.”

“Me too,” Hawkeye says, because not having to go through Radar _would_ be nice. That’d be really nice, in fact.

Margaret’s head whips around to him. She looks just a tiny bit scandalized, but more like she heard some grade A gossip than like she’s about to call the first available General in her little black book, scream about pink and ask for something blue. “You should not be in the Army,” she says, with surprisingly good enunciation for someone who Hawkeye by now suspects of having finished a bottle of brandy by herself before she came here.

“That’s what I told my draft board, but they wouldn’t listen.”

Margaret raises her eyebrows. “Bet you didn’t tell them you wanted to kiss Trapper.”

“No,” Hawkeye admits, because even he’s not that crazy. Yet. “Couldn’t. Didn’t know him then.”

That seems to strike Margaret as hilarious, because she starts laughing. It’s just little hiccups at first, but soon she has to clutch the bar and let her head sink to her arms so she doesn’t slip off her barstool, and still she doesn’t stop. Hawkeye joins in, purely because it feels good and Margaret’s laughter is infectious and if he can’t laugh about the guy he was maybe a little bit in love with making it out of this place alive and well and leaving him behind in the process, then he might have to cry about it. There’s already so much to cry about in a war.

They keep laughing and drinking and cursing at people’s wives until Mr. Kwang gently suggests to them that the officer’s club closed half an hour ago, and then they tip him double and laugh some more and stagger out of the bar, with not two decently steady legs between the both of them. Hawkeye lets Margaret cling to him for stability but also clings right back, and they make a sharp right turn that they didn’t really mean to take, and then they both realize what happened and collapse, giggling, against the outer wall of the officer’s club, in the shadows just around the corner of the entrance. 

It’s like being with Trapper again, just a little bit.

“This is awful,” Margaret says, gasping for breath and wiping a tear from her eye with her beautiful hands. “I’m second in command now. I’m not supposed to be drunk.”

“We’re not supposed to be in Korea either,” Hawkeye says, with great difficulty, and that sets her off again.

When they calm down this time, he has an arm around her waist and one of her hands is in his hair. He’s not sure how it got there, but he’s sure he doesn’t mind. She moves her hand, like she’s checking if the hair is really as flat as it looks, and he can feel her nails on his scalp, much sharper than the blunt ones he’s been thinking of. It makes him shiver all the same. 

“Have you ever been here with Trapper?” she asks, hushed and intense suddenly, like a switch has been flipped. Her eyes are kind. Like Trapper’s.

He tries to give her his most Irish grin. “Have you?”

“Of course not,” she says, with a flicker of her normal uptight mask, and then she kisses him.

They’ve done that before, but only when he surprised her with it, in broad daylight and in public, as a way to stick it to Frank or the Army or life in general. This is different. This is the middle of the night, after they’ve been friends for an evening, while they’re both thinking of reddish blond hair and a crooked smile and a hat with a jaunty feather in the band.

“You’re not blond enough,” she says, running her fingers against the grain of his hair.

He nips her ear, where whisps of platinum tickle his nose. “You’re too blonde.”

“Your chest isn’t broad enough.” Her other hand moves from his shoulder down.

“Yours is too big.” He pulls her closer, trapping himself between her body and the wall. It all seems very unreal for a moment. “Can’t believe I just said that.”

“That’s okay. I can’t believe we’re having any of this conversation at all.” She says that, and then kisses him again, and he kisses her back because it’s kind of a relief to stop talking or thinking and concentrate on just feeling.

She kisses nothing like Trapper. Her breasts and her slender hands and her unstubbled cheek leave scarce room for illusions, but then Hawkeye is very skilled at denial and working miracles under impossible conditions. He closes his eyes and sinks into Margaret and her kisses and the moment, and if that takes him deep enough he can taste traces of a different person and a different kiss and a different moment altogether, then he’s neither the first nor the last American taking what he can get in Korea while dreaming of someone back home.

At a certain point, Margaret leans back and sighs, wistful, and Hawkeye is hit with a wave of affection not for Trapper, but for this person in front of him. He disengages from her, and then links his arm through hers. “He’s missing out, you know.”

Margaret tightens her grip, pulls him closer, and then pulls them both out from behind the building and back into the semi-real world of a medical unit in a police action. “Serves him right,” she says, as together they sway in the direction of their separate beds.

*

Getting up is awful. Breakfast is terrible. Coffee is dreadful but life-giving.

BJ’s been respectful of Hawkeye’s hangover and has been chatting with Kellye and nurse Baker on the other side of their table, but then Frank and Margaret show up. Frank, still in seventh heaven about his command and how much extra he’ll be able to charge his patients after the war because of it, nevertheless deigns to sit with the common folk.

Right across from Hawkeye and BJ. 

“Morning, Hunnicut, Pierce,” Frank says. He’d be keeping his chin up in the air if he had one.

“Hello, Frank,” BJ replies dutifully, and Hawkeye grunts something similar. He’s not up for the cheeriness BJ injects into it, even though it’s a good surefire way to drive Frank a little mad with utterly baseless paranoia. “Hi Margaret.”

Margaret, all of her hair pulled back, her make-up done to perfection and her back akin to a ruler, nods at them both. “Hunnicut, Pierce.”

Hawkeye slouches a little further over his coffee. Things have snapped back to the way they were; what may have happened a few hours ago doesn’t mean a thing anymore, because like he promised Margaret, it never even happened at all. 

But her nails are still perfect, and it’s not weird if he hits on her. He does that all the time. “Do you know that you have a surgeon’s hands, Major?” he asks, in lieu of a hello. For her, he can string together a sentence.

BJ is looking between them with curiosity, and Frank with that utter blank incomprehension he carries half the time anyone shows the barest hint of humanity, but it’s Margaret’s face that matters to Hawkeye. She looks at him like she’s taking measure. Then she purses her lips, delicately picks up her fork and knife, and saws into her slab of mystery sausage while she says, “You should wash your hair, Captain. From this angle it almost looks like you have curls.”

That does something extremely difficult, in that it sparks a thought in Frank Burns’s brain. “You like curls, Margaret.”

“Eat your breakfast, Frank,” Margaret says, like a mother with strained patience, and Frank gapes a bit but does as ordered.

BJ is looking directly at Hawkeye now, eyebrows raised in a question. When Hawkeye notices he waves a warning teaspoon at him. “That goes for you too, Beej. Be a good boy.”

“Yes, father,” BJ says, and two tables over Father Mulcahy raises his head. At their own, Frank is angrily shoveling oatmeal into his mouth like that’s going to show people, and BJ is eating but like he’s storing away questions, and in the middle of it all, Margaret is still cutting up her sausage patty and smiling just the barest hint of a smile now for no reason at all.

Hawkeye cradles his coffee and feels a little less left behind, randomly, for the same no reason at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments will be received like puppies (with great enthusiasm, love, and very possibly some squealing) and if you want you can find me on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com/). ❤


End file.
